The alarm went off, sending an agonising wave of pulses through her head. Miranda gritted her teeth, fumbling for the snooze button. Seven minutes to decide how the day would progress from here.

When had she finally fallen asleep? Had the light been seeping in through Venetian blinds? Or was that yesterday? The day before?

Easing back from the clock radio, she unclenched her jaw and rolled onto her side, remoulding to the body pillow. Miranda forced beyond the headache, to take stock of the rest of her body. Her arms and legs ached, no better or worse than yesterday, and her bowels felt weak. Nothing new there. She moved her hands with slow, meticulous strokes over her swollen abdomen which had once been washboard flat and hard from daily abuse at the gym, then examined her puffy fingers now devoid of the rings she loved so much. The effort exhausted her.

Pushing through the fog that wooed her back into the release of sleep, she reached once more and wrapped her fingers around the small diary on the bedside table. Lying in a haphazard manner on her side and placing the diary on the elongated pillow, Miranda scribbled down the symptoms. There would be more as the day progressed. Erratic mood swings. Unusual sweating. Cold feet. There had been new additions in the last week – fevers and sore glands. Or had she just failed to notice them before?

This little book was her testament to the truth, not the rambling hallucinations of a hypochondriac. The notes in her shaky script were concrete facts. Even if she was the only one who believed it.

The alarm burst to life.

Miranda moaned, crawling back across the yawning divide, turning the alarm off and grabbing her mobile. Every fibre of her body screamed with the effort as she dragged her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. The room spun for a moment as she tried to focus on the list of “W” numbers, until she came to work. It only took two rings and she was connected to the outside world.

“Good morning Eloise.” Her voice weak, rasped, devoid of the ray of sunshine she’d always believed radiated through it.

“Ringing in sick again Miranda?”

“I’m not feeling so good.”

“Of course you’re not.” Eloise had once been her friend and the sarcasm cut Miranda deeper than the obvious lack of empathy. She is sitting in my chair. Schmoozing with my boss. Imagining that my job is … her job! I got her the temp job.

“You will need to ring HR about applying for holidays. You’re all out of sick leave.” Eloise’s been in my personnel file checking my sick leave?

“But my medical cert -” Her voice fell in on itself and the words were barely audible.

“Take it up with HR. Some of us around here have work to do,” and the line went dead.

It took a while for Miranda to realise that the strange sound was her own weeping. It didn’t surprise her she hadn’t recognised her own crying. Increasingly she was detaching from her somatic experience to cope.

Someone else’s pain. Someone else’s problem. Someone else’s world falling apart. Not mine.

The doctors had ordered a plethora of tests. She did not have the Epstein Bar virus ruling out Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – which seemed to her the most obvious diagnosis given her symptoms. She wasn’t suffering from an auto immune disease or an obscure tropical virus compliments of the trip to Thailand earlier in the year. There was nothing. According to the tests she was a healthy young woman – who just happened to be wasting away as the world moved on. The latest diagnosis was depression and she’d been forced to see a psychiatrist – a specialist at the University.

The blister pack of Zoloft with the single crumpled plastic dome had been flung next to the bed lamp and was gathering dust.

Bad patient! Bad Miranda! Bad girl! Bad. Bad. Bad.

The collective agreement had been that her physical symptoms were psychosomatic – willing herself into illness. Abandonment and mother issues from childhood. Self hatred manifesting as self punishment manifesting as imagined or created illness.

Psycho babble. Bull shit.

The Zoloft made her nauseous and even further detached her frail grasp on reality. Regardless of what the blister packet whispered to her in the middle of the night, she refused to take another. Miranda was a liar but she would never concede to being mad. No matter how sick and pathetic she became.

The Doctors rationalised away the skin irritations and the mysterious swelling as side effects of the Zoloft. The medical fraternity had the audacity to take the moral high ground with her health – to presume they knew best.

Talking out of their arses. There is no magic pill – if I’m imagining this. But I am SICK!. This is real.

____

Purchase The Red Book to read “Mercurial” in its entirety.  Official release is 1st December – pre-release orders taken as of 24th November.